Open House Celebration

You have been over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house for Thanksgiving, and now it is time we invite you into ours! Elaine Hsieh Chocolatier and Albertine Press can't wait to throw their doors open and invite you in for some delicious chocolate tastings and antique letterpress demonstrations. This will be some of the most "tasteful" shopping you will get to do this season.

We’re hosting an Open House from 12:00-4:00pm in our new location at 561 Windsor St. B-206 Somerville, MA. We are celebrating with our neighbors, Albertine Press, a design and letterpress print shop. Start or complete all your holiday shopping at once! There will be samples, boxed chocolates, and beautiful holiday cards available.

See you all soon!

Season of giving....chocolate

Yes, where is that chocolate? So many of you have enthusiastically asked and patiently waited...and waited...and waited.

We have chocolate - and lots of it! Our new kitchen, and we, are up and running. The shelves are brimming with chocolate, cream and butter and we can't wait to share our chocolates with you once again.




Due to ''technical difficulties'', our shopping cart is not quite ready to accept orders. We will have the new shopping cart up and running soon and appreciate your continued support and patience. While the site is under construction, we have set up "shop" at etsy to accept your chocolate orders!


So what's new for this year? Well, in addition to the Chocolate Club memberships, we have expanded our menu to include boxed collections that are always available, like the Bourbon Caramel Pecan Clusters and our Three Teas Collection. For the week of Thanksgiving, our boxed collections are available to ship on Tuesday, order by midnight Monday - expect arrival by Friday or Saturday. We're also offering pick-up from our new space. Just let us know by email, and we'll have it ready for you for Tuesday!

Thank Goodness We Don't Say: Chocolate

Production Photo by Dan Orlow

Cheese wins when it comes to having your photo taken. I don't think you would like the results if you said "chocolate" unless you are going for that startled, slightly stunned look. Not a problem here because we are not photographing ourselves (okay so Dan took a few production photos but we were just an "aside".) The models for this shoot were all ganache. No make up needed. No fake food here and no melt downs either. We recently headed to local photographer Ellen Callaway's studio for some new "chocolate portraits" in preparation for the next phase of Elaine Hsieh Chocolatier.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but, when it comes to food, the picture needs to be worth a thousand flavors, textures, aromas and tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, spicy, and perhaps umami. This is not that easy to achieve. With the explosion of food blogs, flickr groups, and food photography sites you can find everything from photos of horrid looking food to mouthwatering shots. You might have a delicious bite in front of you, but if you can't capture it well on film, there is no convincing anyone that it tastes better than the photograph looks unless they can smell the aromas and take a bite. Here are some of our favorite sites that are mouthwatering and delicious to just plain ridiculous.

Mouthwatering & Delicious

Food Gawker
TasteSpotting
Food Porn Daily
Food Porn
Photo Grazing
Rezimo
Foodie Views
Liqurious


Local Food Bloggers with delicious Photos
La Tartine Gourmande
Erin Cooks
17 and Baking
Boston Food & Whine
Food on the Food
Tiny Urban Kitchen
Once Upon A Small Boston Kitchen
My Camera Eats Food
Poor Girl Gourmet
Eat Boutique
(a little less local but definitely worth looking at) Smitten Kitchen

Ridiculous & Entertaining
Cake Wrecks
Baked goods gone wrong. Spelling and grammar snafus, ridiculous cake designs, and "what were they thinking?" treats.
Fancy Fast Food
Extreme makeovers of real fast food "meals". You will not believe your eyes. This is not a make fast food healthy site. It is actual fast food transformed into fine dining type meals.
Airplanefood.net
Photographs of airline meals from travelers.

Happy browsing and enjoy the feast for your eyes. We can't wait to share our new photos with you but they are not quite ready yet. Keep your eyes peeled.

No Tricks But Plenty of Treats

There is no denying that Hershey's, Nestle, and Mars have it in the bag when it comes to trick or treating. They are the perfect companions for the colored Carnauba wax covered candies that melt, crunch, stick, and pop between your teeth after an evening of staying up past your bedtime and spending time knocking on neighbors doors.

As chocolate makers and creators of confection we can't let the month of October end without a little nod to the sugar filled celebration of Halloween. This year, according to the LA Times, Avatar will be one of the hot costumes hand made or store bought. On that theme, we thought we'd let you in on some of the secrets behind our avatar. Okay so this is a little more trick than treat. We don't mean the movie character here, but rather our little picture that represents Elaine Hsieh Chocolatier on Facebook and Twitter.

Nothing says Halloween like a little "black" and orange. The photo we are using is of our orange zest ganache. We infuse fresh orange zest into the cream for the ganache. The chocolate is a Michel Cluizel single plantation Vila Gracinda 67% dark. Once ready, the ganache is cut on a guitar and each square of ganache is then hand enrobed in Valhrona 70% Guanaja. The orange sliver on top is a slice of candied orange peel. One more trick...this chocolate is one of our chef's choice chocolates available just a few weeks each year and it is not available at the moment.

We do have a wonderful treat though, we will officially be open for business in less than a fortnight! We have passed our inspection and starting soon we will be making some of the best treats in town (or so we've heard).

And this is....a chocolate business?

This may take a while....

Zipppppp!!!

That's the sound this past year just made as we went through an entire chocolate season - 9 months, 40 unique flavors, 6 crazy confections, 750 Priority boxes, a bazillion bioD-peanuts, batches tested, batches thrown out, batches burnt. Tomorrow we mail our very last shipment for the season - 180 packets of ice, 50 insulated bubble envelopes....

So, what we've learned....

You can't rush chocolate

Sometimes it's best to eat lunch before making any major decisions

Do dishes not creative finish work at the end of the day

We drink a lot of tea

Bows are more labor-intensive than dipping chocolate

We can dip over 1000 chocolates in a day

Write everything down

We have the memory capacity of one person

It's good to have OCD and pet peeves

We love to make chocolates....